Your Opinion: Time to cut spending

Your Opinion: Time to cut spending

December 15th, 2013by Bert Dirschell, Centertown
in News

Dear Editor:

After reading the AP article Dec. 11 on the federal budget I wonder why the News Tribune would regurgitate such drivel. It read like a press release put out by a bloated government, a government whose main goal is to continue its ever increasing rate of growth until it controls everything. (After the way the IRS went after groups pushing for smaller government I think it is obvious that we do have this type of government.)

Sequestration has been the only significant attempt to rein in the recent massive increases in government spending. The current "deal" will restore $65 billion of the sequestration cuts over the next two years. To offset this we are told, "spending reductions and increased fees elsewhere in the budget totaling about $85 billion over a decade, enough for a largely symbolic cut of roughly $20 billion in the nation's $17 trillion debt."

What type of fuzzy math allows one to translate $65 billion more in spending over the next two years, offset by $85 billion in other "savings over 10 years, to reduce the nation's $17 trillion debt? Folks, there is no person in government proposing any budget that will allow even $1 of reduction in the national debt. According to the Washington Post this deal will increase fiscal 2014 spending by $45 billion. The federal government won't be satisfied until we are all slaves to it. It will either hook us on some type of welfare (low cost student loans, farm subsidies, etc.?) and convince us that we are to inept to make it on our own, or it will tax us until we have no incentive to work hard.

With the exception of fiscal 2009, when both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats, annual spending during Bush's presidency averaged $2.47 trillion. Under Obama annual federal spending has averaged $3.57 trillion, and we are no longer fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No one can give me any credible reason why spending can't be cut by at least $750 billion a year. If spending were reduced to Clinton era levels $2.4 trillion/year (adjusted for inflation), we would have had a $300 billion budget surplus in fiscal 2013.